Increase User Engagement with Easy-to-Find Content

Business Challenge

PM College offers sophisticated project management training courses worldwide. However, their dated website no longer appealed to CEOs and international business leaders.

The [old site] isn’t very user friendly. It doesn’t encourage interactions like searching for courses or commenting on blogs.

— Allison McManus, PM College

The team was also frustrated that making updates were difficult with the inflexible system. They knew updates should be easier because of the easy-to-use site BOT built for their parent company, PM Solutions.

Our Solution

The PM College team had a few primary goals: make the content easier to find, and create a modern design that reflected the caliber of their courses.

Course Finder Widgetmakes searching courses easy – Courses are the workhorse and lead generation content of the site. So we designed a Course Finder Widget that can be easily inserted into any page – making it simple for users to find courses that matter to them.

Create brand congruity – Our goal was to establish brand similarity, but make sure the sites appeared distinctive if you only had 5 seconds to look. We refreshed the look with more modern design conventions and tweaked the color palette to make it stand out.

PM College Homepage compared to the PM Solutions Homepage

Information carrying image is subtle but effective – The hero tile image is important. It should be relevant, but not overpowering. We tried a version smiling stock models – but who are those people? Instead, we chose an image that showed professional adults in a presentation. It connects with the message and shows a relatable setting for "professional training".

Finally, we helped PM College stretch their budget by making the decision to duplicate the CMS and IA from PM Solutions. They liked how the PM Solutions CMS worked. They needed many of the same content features. So why reinvent the wheel? Duplicating the CMS and IA saved 14% in project fees and gave them a more flexible system

Impact

PM College launched in June 2015. So far, PM College is finding the site easier to update and better to navigate.

We ran a 5 Second Test comparison of the old site vs. the new site. Here’s what users had to say.

Old site vs. New site

The design has certainly shifted in the right direction. To make sure the site is effective in generating leads, we set up some goals in Google Analytics to track performance of the new site.

Bright Orange Thread

We are user-focused digital marketers who deeply understand how users interact with the web and how businesses can better communicate with them. We incorporate audience-centric messaging into strategically designed websites that are search-engine friendly. We attain high rankings and we balance usability with design so visitors quickly and easily find useful information. The result: We help businesses generate new business leads.